all things that you please.
Willm Lowër.
Tra’vent on Mount Martin [in South Wales.] 6 February, 1610.
Let me not make my selfe more able then ther is cause. I can not order
the calculation by the construction you sent me of Vieta’s 3. probleme,
to find the distances of C. & D. & B. from the Apegen or the proportion
of ia. to ac. the eccentricitie. I tooke Copernicus, 3. observations in
the, 6. chap, of his, 5. booke, therfore helpe here once againe.
_Addressed:_ To his especiall good friend
Mr. THO : HARRYOT at Sion neere London.
About this time, it is understood, Raleigh took up seriously and
earnestly the great literary work of his life, _The History of the
World._ It must have been brewing in his mind for years, for in his
preface he expressed the fears he had entertained ‘that the darkness of
age and death would have overtaken him long before the performance.’
The work, according to Camden, was published in April 1614, just before
the meeting of Parliament. It appeared anonymously, and for obvious
reasons was not entered at Stationers’ Hall. James is said to have had
his conscience so pricked by certain passages which everywhere pervade
the work on the power, conduct and responsibility of princes, that
strenuous efforts were made in January 1615 to call in and suppress it,
but the king might as well have attempted to call back a departed
spirit by Act of Parliament as to call in that ‘History of the World’
by royal proclamation. The Book was in type and in the hands of the
people of England. It could therefore no more be suppressed at that day
by princely power than could manifest destiny itself. The second
edition of 1621 was the first with Raleigh’s name.
This grand work, which in almost everychapter shows the masterly hand
of Raleigh himself, needs no comment here. It is however no
disparagement of the book (but the contrary) to say that in the
collection, arrangement and condensation of its materials; that in
unlocking the muniment room of antiquity and perusing the chief authors
of the Greek and Latin classics from Heroditus to Livy and Eusebius,
covering a period of near four thousand years, he must have had at
cheerful beck powerful and competent aid. To collect, read, collate,
note down, and digest these vast and scattered treasures into
reasonable and presentable shape for the master mind, required not a
bevy of poets and parsons, but one masterly scholar of scientific,
analytic, mathematical, philosophical and religious training. Such a
man was Hariot.
We read of Gibbon’s twenty years’ fag and toil on the materials of the
History of the Roman Empire alone, and at a time when there were many
aids not existing in Raleigh’s day. Gibbon personally ransacked the
libraries of Europe. Raleigh had scarcely four years to cover the four
most ancient empires and a much longer period, and was himself confined
to Tower Hill. But he had at command a Hariot, a sort of winged
Mercury, who was neither entowered nor hide-bound with conceit or
ignorance. He was a marvellously good Greek and Latin scholar, who
wrote Latin with almost as much ease as English. One has but to read
the vast number of notes, citations and particular references in the
History of the World to see the height, depth, and perfect modelling of
the structure.
Raleigh was unquestionably the designer, the architect and the finisher
of his History of the World. To him is due the honor and credit of the
work. But who was the builder ? The answer manifestly is Thomas Hariot
of Sion on Thames, learned, patient, self-forgetting, painstaking,
long-waiting, devoted Hariot. Many writers have claimed to be, or have
been named as, Sir Walter’s assistants and polishers. Ben Jonson, Rev.
Dr Burhill, John Hoskins the poet, and others have each had their
advocates,but without sufficient evidence. It may well be questioned if
any one of them possessed either the ability, the time, the access to
the Tower, or the opportunity to perform such herculean labors of love.
These claims are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or
unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply
to Mr Isaac D’israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed
abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof
of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed
historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved
partly at Petworth and partly in the British Museum.
The Hariot manuscripts, of which there are thousands of folio pages all
in his own handwriting, seem to be still in the same confused state in
which he left them. He directed that the ‘waste’ should be weeded out
of his mathematical papers and destroyed. But this duty seems,
fortunately for us, to have been neglected by his executors, and hence
among this ‘waste’ one has even now no great difficulty in recognizing
in the well-known Latin handwriting of the’ magician,’ many jottings in
chronology, geography and science, and many abstracts and citations of
the classics, that in their time must have played parts in the _History
of the World._ The Will now first produced lets in a flood of light on
the history of these valued papers, and dispels a great deal of the
heaps of foreign pretension, domestic assertion, and mixed charlatanism
that have since 1784 beclouded the memories of both Raleigh and Hariot.
It is true that on a hint in the previous century from Camden of a will
by the great mathematician, many conjectures were afloat from the days
of Pell, Collins, Wallis and Wood, but it has not been possible until
now for one, with due knowledge of the main events in the lives of
these two men, each equally great in his own sphere, to satisfactorily
clear away any considerable portion of the misconception and
misstatements of biographers and historians concerning them and their
achievements. The dawn however is coming, when these new materials now
first printed by the Hercules Club, but not worked up, may attract the
attention of some historian competent to give them a thorough
scientific scrutiny and ‘pen their doctrine.’
It is not our purpose here to dwell upon Raleigh’s masterpiece. From
the preface of the _History of the World,_ which opens with ‘the
boundless ambition of mortal man,’ to the epilogue which closes up the
work with the glorious triumph of Death, the whole book is replete with
lessons of wisdom and warning. No one can rise from its perusal without
perceiving that the modern author has made himself by apt illustration
an accomplished actor in ancient history, while the ancient characters
are made in their vera effigies to strut on modern stages. His pictures
of great actions and great men, noble deeds and nobler princes, are
drawn with such masterly perspective of truth, that they serve for all
time ; while his portraiture of tyrants, villains, and dishonorable
characters are no less lifelike and human. One marvels not therefore
that King James, whose political creed was that the people are bound to
princes by iron, and princes to the people by cobwebs, should see in
Raleigh’s portraiture of the upright kings no likeness to himself, but
had no difficulty in recognizing in the deformed greatness and selfish
virtues of the old monarchs qualities suggestive of himself and his
favorites. This grand history, extending from the creation over the
four great monarchies of the world, near four thousand years, closes
with the final triumph of Emilius Paullus in these memorable and
oft-repeated words from the first edition of 1614.
Kings and Princes have alwayes laid before them, the actions, but not
the ends, of those great Ones which precededthem. They are alwayes
transported with the glorie of the one, but they never minde the
miserie of the other, till they finde the experience themselves. They
neglect the advice of God, while they enioy life, or hope it; but they
follow the counsell of Death, upon his first approach. It is he that
puts into man all the wisdome of the world, without speaking a word ;
which God with all the words of His Law, promises, or threats, doth not
infuse. Death which hateth and destroyeth man, is beleeved ; God, which
hath made him and loves him, is alwayes deferred. I have considered,
saith Solomon, all the workes that are under the Sunne, and behold, all
is vanitie and vexation of spirit: but who beleeves it, till Death
tells it us. It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the
fift, made him enjoyne his sonne Philip to restore Navarre ; and King
Francis the First of France, to command that justice should be done
upon the murderers of the Protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which
till then he neglected. It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly
make man know himselfe. He tells the proud and insolent, that they are
but Abjects, and humbles them at the instant ; makes them crie,
complaine, and repent; yea, even to hate their forepassed happinesse.
He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked
begger, which hath interest in nothing, but in the grauell that filles
his mouth. He holds a glasse before the eyes of the most beautifull,
and makes them see therein their deformitie and rottennesse; and they
acknowledge it.
O eloquent, just and mightie Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast
perswaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the
world hath flattered, thou onely hast cast out of the world and
despised : thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched
greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition, of man, and covered
it all over with those two narrow words : _Hic jacet._
With this outburst of true eloquence the historian of the world laid
down his pen in 1614. Four short years later the same historian
himself, wickedly sacrificed by his hispaniolized monarch, laid down
his life on the scaffold, with an apotheosis scarcely less eloquent. No
death recorded in ancient or modern history is more grand or
instructive than that of Sir Walter Raleigh, in many respects the
greatest man of his age.
On the execution being granted in the King’s Bench Court, on the
afternoon of the 28th of October 1618, he asked for a little time for
pre- paration, but his request was refused, Bacon having already in his
pocket the death warrant duly signed by the King before the meeting of
the Court! Sir Walter then asked for paper, pen and ink; and when he
came to die that he might be permitted to speak at his farewell. To
these last requests he appears to have received no reply, but was with
indecent haste hustled off to the Gate House for execution early the
next morning, the 29th of October, Lord Mayor’s day, when it was
expected that the crowd would go cityward. However, there was a crowd,
and probably in consequence he was not prohibited from speaking. He had
prepared himself, and is said to have consulted a _‘Note of
Remembrance’_ which he held in his hand while speaking. It is possible,
nay, probable that this very same _Note_ still survives in
‘paper-saving’ Hariot’s ‘waste,’ for a precious little waif, all
crumpled and soiled, just such a ‘Note of Remembrance,’ it is believed,
as Raleigh held in his hand and consulted during that ever memorable
speech, has comedown to us, and is now preserved among the Hariot
papers in the British Museum. It has been recently recognized and
identified by Mr Stevens, who has placed it, with other newly
discovered documents respecting our philosopher, at the disposition of
the Hercules Club. It is thought to possess internal evidence of having
been drawn out _before_ the speech, and is not therefore Hariot’s
jottings of remembrance _after_ it. But positive proof is wanting.
It is beyond all doubt, however, in the well-known handwriting of
Hariot, and is presumed to be the ‘note of remembrance’ _for_ the
speech, made in the Gate House, probably from dictation, during the
night before the execution. It appears as if hurriedly penned with a
blunt quill, and is on a narrow strip of thin foolscap paper such as
Hariot used. It is about twelve inches long and nearly four inches
wide, about one-third of the lower part of the paper being blank. There
is no heading, date, or anything else on the paper. It is rather
difficult to read, but every word, letter and point have been made out,
and the whole _Note_ is here given, line for line, and verbatim, the
heading and press-mark only being added :
[SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S ‘NOTE OR REMEMBRANCE’
_for his speech on the Scaffold_ Oct. 29 1618.]
Two fits of an agew.
Thankes to god.
of calling god to witness.
note
That He Speake iustly & truely.